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Arrow: Is The Spectre Coming in Season 5?

With Arrow being the flagship series of the DC TV universe, it comes as no surprise that connections to other shows (no matter how thin) can be found when looking. After NBC cancelled Constantine, the hellblazer found himself in Star City when Matt Ryan guest starred as John Constantine on Arrow. Surely if Constantine exists in the Arrowverse, so do other characters from the series, say like James Corrigan?

After the introduction of metahumans and magic, Arrow has pushed further into the world of comics and moved away from being the DC show grounded in normalcy. The series has progressed from highly skilled and well trained assassins pushing their own agendas to evil big bads powered by death and magical totems. Just recently, however, star Stephen Amell spoke about season 5 saying that the major villain is not super-powered.

But leave it to Twitter to feed the beast of speculation after Arrow series stunt coordinator and sometimes director, James Bamford, said they're back to filming [h/t Collider].

When we learned about the new, non-metahuman big bad coming to Arrow season 5, we also found out that the show was casting for "James," a new character making his way to Star City. In the DC Comics, James Corrigan embodies the spirit of vengeance (hence the speculation caused by Bamford's tweet) as he wreaks havoc under the moniker of The Spectre. John Constantine isn't his only connection to Arrow given that at one point in the comics, he leveled the country of Vlatava; which just so happens to be where Count Vertigo (the real one) was from. The Spectre even had a very limited run as part of the Justice Society of America. Yes, the same JSA that was just introduced on Legends of Tomorrow.

The Spectre is an interesting character given that he's often portrayed as a man who was murdered, but could not rest in the afterlife and was sent back to Earth to do the bidding of an omniscient presence known as The Voice. In an almost Jekyll and Hyde type of battle, James Corrigan and The Spectre are two separate entities that inhabit the same body: James is a man always teetering on the edge with justice on one side and vengeance on the other. The two most recent versions (The New 52 and Constantine) both listed James Corrigan as a police detective who suffers a terrible death and comes back to set things right.

The strings are there, and it would certainly be interesting to see how Arrow would bring The Spectre to life. If the season 5 villain (as described) is a major crime boss and "James" does turn out to be James Corrigan, it's possible that the villain is the reason James might suffer that terrible death Zed kept having visions of in Constantine. So, a Green Arrow and The Spectre team up may not seem too far-fetched after all.

Supergirl season 2 will air at 8pm Mondays on The CW in Fall 2016, The Flash will air in the same timeslot on Tuesdays, Arrow on Wednesdays, and Legends of Tomorrow on Thursdays.